What Is Employer Paid Term Life Insurance?

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RANLYN OAKES Last Updated: Jul 08, 2015

Ranlyn Oakes

Ranlyn Oakes is a business writer and journalist with more than a decade as either a staff writer or freelancer for a variety of regional and national publications, including newspapers and magazines. His specialties include health care, international trade, manufacturing and career advice. Oakes holds a Bachelor of Arts in print journalism from the University of Kentucky.

A young couple is talking to an insurance agent.Photo Credit Szepy/iStock/Getty Images

Employer-paid life insurance can be an important part of protecting your family in the event that you die prematurely. Companies offer the program on top of other benefits, such as health insurance. The coverage is generally term insurance, meaning there is no investment or cash-value component. If you pass on unexpectedly, depriving your family not only of your presence but also your income, your dependents will be glad you signed up for your workplace's life insurance benefit.

Basics

Employer-paid term life insurance comes as an option through some employee benefits packages. It works, in a sense, like group health insurance: Rather than buying a separate policy for each employee, the employer buys a single policy that covers all workers who participate, according to Insurance.com. Thus, the employer pays one premium, not a separate premium for each employee. You may be responsible for a part of the premium, too. Typically, the death benefit is one or two times your yearly salary, according to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.

Advantages

Life insurance acquired through your employer is likely to be cheaper than what you can buy on the open market, since your employer is likely to cover at least part of the premiums, according to Insurance.com. Additionally, you do not have to undergo individual underwriting, which means you can get coverage even if you have a serious health condition, like heart disease, that would, according to Insure.com, get you denied or make you have to pay high premiums if you were buying on the open market.

Warning

Depending exclusively on employer-paid life insurance to protect your family has some disadvantages, according to Insurance.com. The main one is that if you leave your job, you stand a high chance of losing your insurance. Depending on your age and health status at that time, according to Insurance.com, you may or may not be able to get new insurance at a reasonable rate. For that reason, it is best to carry employer group insurance only as a supplement to other coverage. Another drawback to such coverage is that the amount of insurance available to you is likely to be limited, though some plans allow you to get more coverage for an additional fee.

Considerations

Some employer-paid life insurance plans, according to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' 360 Degrees of Financial Literacy website, can follow you even when you leave your job. But most employees decide against doing this for the reason that the "conversion premiums" tend to be higher than prices for comparable individual policies. Typically, according to the site, "only those who are otherwise uninsurable take advantage of this conversion option."

Taxes

The Internal Revenue Service taxes life insurance that has a value above $50,000. It uses a formula that takes into account your age and the amount of your death benefit to determine the taxable value per month.